​I found “What’s My Word?” on one of my favorite teaching sites: Pinterest :) I thought it looked like a lot of fun, so I looked for a version that was more suitable for secondary students, but I was unable to find one, so I did what teachers do and created my own. This is the first version that I came up with:

​After trying this with my middle school students (who are struggling readers). I realized the first version was a little too challenging for them. Accordingly, this is the second version that I came up with which provides more scaffolding:

Prepping Students for Play

​In order to prep the students for play we practiced several times in small groups (we do small group instruction in my class regularly). We would select a word for one person and then we would practice giving clues, which is the hardest part. Students seemed to have the most difficulty coming up with a sentence that uses the word without giving away the word. During this practice period we discussed what made a good clue, and how we could make our clues better. I also used this time to revise the activity and provide additional scaffolding. All of this was to get the students ready to play with the whole class. I would like to mention that the students enjoyed this so much and became so adept at doing it in small groups that they requested to do it during their independent work station.

Classroom Implementation

​When we were ready for whole class play, I selected 13 words (that we have been working on since the beginning of the semester) and prepped the stickers for students.

​Next, I decided to leave up our word wall to serve as a word bank:

​Before we began, I reviewed the words, the rules, and we talked about what it would look like to be a “Top Player.” We decided it wasn’t someone who “finished first,” it was someone who “went in order, did the work themselves, filled out the entire sheet, and guessed their word.”